Another Kind of Naaman

I was so exhausted this morning. I decided to sleep to the very latest possible time. We all met up at about 9am and headed for McKean. McKean is a leprosy village on an island in a river in Chiang Mai. Legend has it that the crowned prince had a white elephant who went crazy, so they exiled him to that island where he roamed around killing anyone that ventured to it. All that remains now are the spirits of the elephant's victims. When McKean asked if he could have the land for his leprosy colony, they practically paid him to take it. When we got there, it seemed pretty safe to me. We got a brief history of the village there, and then the Aggies put on their singing routine. Afterwards, we all sung some more worship songs in Thai. I have now pretty much mastered the singing in Thai phonetically, now I just need to figure out how to read the real stuff. We got thirty minutes of free fellowship time with the Thai leprosy residents. I hung out with a man named John. In my limited Thai vocabulary, I found out he was an 80-year-old man that liked to play longball. I also learned "ati-taan", which is Thai for "pray", so we also got to exchange prayers for one another. Even though I couldn't understand him, it was a really cool experience. After our fellowshipping, we visited the store where they all sold handicrafts. We were all encouraged to buy stuff here to support their village. I definitley was okay with that though. I never want to miss out on some good souvenir shopping. After that, we had lunch at Khao Soi. We tried some kind of crunchy curry noodles with pork, and they were delicious! After lunch, we were supposed to hang out with our game day groups from Saturday and do an afternoon activity, but we all kind of scattered in all directions. I went back to the zone to rest, relax, and run. When everyone got back from their afternoon activies, we all drove to MooGaTa for dinner, which was kind of a cook-it-yourself meat buffet. I was a pretty good MooGaTa cook if I do say so myself. After dinner, we went back to the zone for a devo. John spoke about his Chiang Mai internship. It seems like he has gotten so much out of his time here, which makes me really excited! He is so eloquent and mature in his words. I am so amazed how he has allowed God to work and transform his spirit. It is cool how you can not only help the people here, but that they are also so instrumental in transforming your life as well. After the devo, I played soccer with some of the guys at the zone for a while. My team won . . . again, but we also had an extra person . . . again. When I made it back to the zone, I locked up, but on my way to bed I ran into John. I got a chance to talk to him for a while about his internship experiences. I really like hearing all of his stories from the past six months. After that, I went to bed pretty quick-ready for another day of fun with AFCO!